Doc: Archie, Sean Miller groomed by father

John Miller: Hard work 'just the way we do things.'

Archie (left) and Sean Miller are both in the Elite Eight.(Photo: Chris Morrison/USA TODAY Sports)

As a high school kid, Sean Miller once shot 100 free throws a day for 1,400 consecutive days. Actually, he skipped a few days – a Christmas here, an Easter there – but when he did, he'd make up for it by shooting 200 the day before. So when Miller started the Breakfast Club while coaching at Xavier, it was nothing unusual.

When Miller determined some of his Musketeers were lacking at the line, he'd summon them for a 6:30 a.m. session of 100 free throws. It didn't matter if you made 80 percent of your attempts in games. If Miller believed you should make 85 percent, there you were at 6:30, eyelids scraping the hardwood.

Miller didn't always care for the way his team went about pre-game warmups. If you styled through the layup line, he saw it. If you shot mindlessly an hour before the game, he noticed. So Miller started holding what XU radio analyst Byron Larkin called "mini-practices, doing defensive slides and rotations.''

Larkin asked Miller why, an hour before a game, his team was practicing. Even the coaching staff was in sweats, not the customary coats and ties. "I'm not happy with the way our team is preparing,'' Miller said. "I'm showing them how.''

Is Archie Miller the same way? A decade younger, yes, but a stitch from the same fabric. "You got a guy, who's 5-foot-9, maybe 155 pounds,'' John Miller said Friday. "And he becomes a productive player in the ACC'' at North Carolina State.

John Miller is the father of Archie and Sean. The Millers are from Beaver, Pa., in southwestern Pennsylvania. It's an area with which I'm familiar, by marriage and blood, and I can tell you it's full of Millers. People with heads as hard as their lives sometimes are. Folks who believe aspirin can cure a broken leg and hard work can cure everything else.

Marvin Lewis is a southwestern Pennsylvania hardhead. "Chopping wood'' wasn't just an axiom Lewis invented and laid on the Bengals; it was southwestern P-A, paying a house call.

"That's my two boys, there,'' John Miller said from Memphis, where he is watching Archie's Dayton Flyers, who will play Florida Saturday, for a trip to the Final 4. Arizona, Sean's team, also plays Saturday, against Wisconsin. "Nose to the grinder, never stop working and getting better.''

"We didn't take vacations,'' Archie said this week.

Apples and trees: John Miller was a legendary high school coach, having won 650 games and played in 18 championship games, regional and state. He coached Sean and Archie at Blackhawk High. He won two state titles with Archie playing point guard.

It was nothing for Sean to shovel a foot of snow from his driveway, so he could work on his jumper. He carried a basketball everywhere. When once he misplaced it, John had an instant replacement, with Sean's name on it in thick Magic Marker.

Byron Larkin tells a story: After a road loss, Sean began watching a DVD of the game almost as soon as he boarded the airplane. He spotted a transgression, made by one of Xavier's best players at the time, who shall remain mercifully nameless. As soon as the fasten seatbelt sign went off, Miller was up in the player's face.

"I mean, this is two hours after the game,'' Larkin laughed.

Players who didn't follow Sean's lead were offered a simple message, said Larkin: "You either responded positively or you'd be out. He'd say, 'I'm hard on you, I'm going to make you better. If you can't take it, I'll help you find another school'.''

John chuckled across the phone line. "It's a hardnosed area. You work for what you get.''

Sean's Breakfast Club? John did it first. "A hundred free throws, before home room,'' he said. "We'd always sneak in extra hours.'' His senior year in high school, Sean made 93 percent of his free throws. "Two-twenty-four out of 244. Something like that,'' John said. "It doesn't just happen. You work. We won five or six games that year'' because of Sean's late-game free-throw accuracy.

Hard work isn't the exclusive province of Pittsburgh, of course. It just seems more obvious there. Even as the city has reinvented itself, from the ashes of a fallen steel industry, its core sensibilities remain. It's why they love the Steelers, who are perceived as tougher than the rest. It's why a relative of mine can have pieces of a metal rod in his leg splinter, and refuse surgery.

It's why John Miller is wandering the country now, following two sons who followed in his footsteps, each of them one win from the Final 4.